Misgendering on the phone

[Mr.X]

I was wondering if any other transguys experience this. It has become quite a big bother for me in the past few months. I'm more than a year on T, and things seem to come along nicely. I've had the expected changes. In real life I'm rarely misgendered.

My voice, however, seems to be a pain. It has lowered a lot, but no matter what I do, I keep on getting misgendered on the phone. I worked at a call centre for half a year until april, and 90%+ of the customers would call me madam. And that was after picking up the phone and telling them my -male- name. I know most don't pay attention, but still. It's ridiculous.

I just got a random phonecall from one of those phonecompanies that would like to ask you a few questions, and sure there it was: madam. It is driving me insane. I'm doing so well in real life when meeting people, but when people go by on my voice alone, I'm apparently female.

I looked up quite a few youtube videos of transguys, and it seems the voice barely changes after a year on T, so i'm not having my hopes up on it lowering a lot more.

Any one of you guys experiencing the same? If so, anything you did that helped? I would really like to get this sorted because it is making me depressed.

[Nygeel]

Happened to me maybe 3x in the past week or two and I don't even use the phone much! I'm around 3.5 years on T.

[sneakersjay]

Happened twice last week and I'll have been on T 6 years next month.  Annoying.  I dislike my voice but it is what it is.


Jay

[Klaus]

Not on testosterone yet, but for what it's worth my voice passes fairly well face-to-face and then on the phone, regardless of using my very male name, I get ma'amed. I refuse to leave a voicemail unless I absolutely have to these days, because that's even worse.

[makipu]

I always hated talking on the phone because I hated my voice.
Now it's somewhat lower and just last week when I was talking on the phone, someone actually asked "is that a mr or a miss" ?
At least that's better than assuming.

[Hex]

I'm 50/50 on everything at the moment. Some days out in the world I'll get a sir and man here and there, others it's ma'am. And in the same turn on the phone. Especially if I don't think before I speak. I've noticed as I'm attempting to make a polite tone my voice goes up and I'm automatically gendered female. If I actually think before I speak and drop my voice as I'm saying something I'm more likely to get gendered male.
I've been also singing with a lot of male vocal songs and working with my husband/brother on matching my tones so as long as I think before I speak I can get in the male range fairly easily.
I know there are some vids on voice therapy and exercises that can help that you can try. I know a lot has to do with speaking from your chest and not your throat. Breathing through your diaphragm a lot more (like they teach in choir class) ect. 

[TrojanMan]

Hi, I wouldn't worry much about this. A lot of cis people actually have this problem too. My mother consistantly gets called a sir on the phone, but I do think the 'polite tone' might make it worse. I realize that for a job you're probably required to speak like that, but maybe at home just try using a very relaxed and casual voice.

[Adam (birkin)]

It's easy to misgender people, cis or trans, on the phone. My brother is cis and he is called ma'am consistently on the phone, to the point where he's actually been denied service by banks and such because they don't believe it could be him. but he's 6'2", has a full beard...you get the drift. I wouldn't take it personally, I've seen pics of you and you're undoubtedly male.

I will say though, my voice continues to change over 2 years on T. The majority of the deepening seems to happen for many people in the first year, but I've seen plenty of people's voice mature and deepen way after 1, sometimes even after 2. It's just more subtle.

[Frank]

You really couldn't get me on the phone before T, but on the one or two occasions that I did call someone, they did not misgender me but they did tell me I sounded older on the phone.

Nowadays it's about four months on T and, while I did not record my pre-t voice (too painful for me), I can tell there's been a significant drop. My chest rumbles for one...second, last time I talked to my mom, she mistook me for my granddad. I haven't called her since, I'm kind of waiting to surprise the bleep out of her. Yeah, my sense of humor...

[FTMDiaries]

I get gendered correctly in person and on the phone... and I wonder whether it's not necessarily something to do with tone of voice, but with inflection?

I'm on the autistic spectrum so my voice naturally sounds kinda flat when I speak... which is a stereotypically male way of speaking. When I was presenting as female it made me sound a bit abrupt because girls aren't supposed to talk like that. I don't know whether this is possibly an issue for you, but I've watched some vids of transguys whose intonation sounds very female despite having a male-range voice, and I've often wondered whether this causes them to get misgendered on the phone.

The sort of intonation I'm on about is the kind where you raise and lower your voice throughout the sentence, but especially where you raise your voice at the end of every sentence as if you're asking a question. Kinda like Valley-speak, or AQI for people from that part of the world. This is a stereotypically female type of inflection that we tend to learn as a way of trying to fit in with the girls at school... and I've heard several transguys who still talk like that post-transition. I'd imagine it's enough to get them misgendered on the phone.

The difference between typical male and female speech is that male speech generally consists of a bunch of relatively flat statements which sound like they're coming from a position of authority; whereas girls are taught to seek consensus from the people they're speaking to so they tend to sound like they're trying to make sure everyone is ok with what they're saying. Does that make sense?

[ryanjoseph]

i'm pre-T, but i got "ma'am-ed" several times today when calling a clinic asking if they had someone who would prescribe hrt to ftms....so there's that...
by face to face, i can tell that people try to avoid gendered terms form me

[Felix]

I had the problem of getting sir a lot on the phone when I was trying to live as female, before transition. It was bad for my self esteem, "real" identity notwithstanding. I learned over the years to mimic other girls, to speak higher, to be gentler, to ask questions and listen well and perform all the other cues that people associate with females.

My position was easier than yours. It was solved for good when I transitioned to male. My voice was probably the only definitive gender marker I was able to provide people for a year or two.

I'm still too nice, though, and people online often assume that I am female.

[Polo]

Has anyone seen this article? I thought it was interesting, and it has links to two clips of FTM voices that are the same vocal pitch but one sounds male and one sounds female due to their differing intonation and S pitch.
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/01/study-change-your-perceived-gender-by-pronouncing-ss-differently/266852/

[Felix]

Has anyone seen this article? I thought it was interesting, and it has links to two clips of FTM voices that are the same vocal pitch but one sounds male and one sounds female due to their differing intonation and S pitch.
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/01/study-change-your-perceived-gender-by-pronouncing-ss-differently/266852/

Thanks for the interesting article.

As a layman, I wish they could have explained more clearly what an "s pitch" is. I was not even familiar with the terms "head voice" and "chest voice."

-
Okay, so I'm just not good at words.

"S pitch" is exactly what it sounds like.
http://www.colorado.edu/news/multimedia/gender-perception-and-pronunciation-%E2%80%98s%E2%80%99-sounds

[aleon515]

I believe I may be misgendered on the phone for a long time (and maybe always), and maybe not by everybody. I have a VERY low voice but that's how I read. I refuse to deal with all the "s's" issue and so on. (Interesting stuff though.) I wouldn't want to think about how I talk that much, it would drive me *more* nuts than getting misgendered. I correct everybody who misgenders them and try to stay polite. I've come up with ways to start a conversation so I don't. For instance, if it's to some company, I'd say "I"m MR XXX" or use my first name which is clearly masculine vs my middle name which isn't.

--Jay

[aleon515]

BTW, I have a friend who is studying speech therapy and didn't think these two samples were the same pitch (she didn't word it the same way, forgot how she said it), she told me she is going to run it thru a program of her's.

--Jay

[Polo]

I think I only had to really work on changing my S pitch and intonation for a few weeks, and after getting it down reasonably well I started being gendered correctly much more often during conversations on the phone or in person (pre-T).

[Ephemeral]

I've seen a speech therapist who has said that I already speak in a typical male pattern so there was nothing for me to do there. The S thing was interesting though, and I'll test it out when I work on Tuesday for funs and lolsies.

With that said, I've been on T for 4+ months and I don't suffer the same problem the OP does despite having the same kind of job. I would wager that my voice is within or around the 160 hz or neutral range. Sometimes I am read as female and sometimes male. It seems to depend a lot more on people's perception of gender than my presentation or sound in this case, I think, as I am by and large the same and present myself the same way. Also curiously, my first name starts with an S sound and I have changed to a male name and yes, people usually don't give a damn.

Another curious thing is that despite my spoken name is clearly male and is quite known due to being Christian/Hebrew in origin, when people think I am a female they also tend to twist its pronunciation so it sounds foreign and would fit some weird logic of therefore being female? When people think I'm a guy they tend to as a whole, pronounce it properly. For those wondering, my first name is Samuel. WTF? I don't think it has anything to do with people's phone reception because this can also sometimes mess with people's resonance a lot.

[Bastian]

Just felt like adding that i'm 2 years into T and my voice has barely dropped. I'm constantly misgendered on the phone and sometimes I out myself with my voice in real life... People who are my friends pretty much just assume i'm gay based on my voice which is fine by me, so long as they don't think i'm female... I've thought of taking voice lessons/therapy to try to speak deeper. If I think about it before I speak I can lower my voice quiet a bit, but if I don't, I speak in a very feminine way. It's got to be the one thing that I was most disappointed in as far as my "Changes on T" go.
That's probably not helpful, but know you aren't alone.

[Mr.X]

Thanks for the replies, guys. It is good to know (and at the same time sad) that i'm not alone in this.
I thought at first that it was my politeness too, but I have been called a few times by companies in the past few weeks, and even after they noted my clearly male name, they still called me ma'am. There is just no doubt from them at all. They assume right away that I'm female. It even happened today after the person asked for my name and wrote it down. Still got a madam from him. It's very depressing. If it were getting better, I would be happy. But right now I'm always ma'amed on the phone, even at home.

So I made a short video. Could you guys be the judge? What should I change? Or am I doomed? I know I shouldn't whine about this and be happy with the changes I did get, but for some reason, it's really upsetting me.

http://smg.photobucket.com/user/duckchicken/media/Capture_20140702_4_zps79fcfc8b.mp4.html